," said Innerarity.

"Have you any knowledge of this business?"

"I 'ave.'

"Can you keep shop in the forenoon or afternoon indifferently, as I may
require?"

"Eh? Forenoon--afternoon?" was the reply.

"Can you paint sometimes in the morning and keep shop in the evening?"

"Yes, seh."

Minor details were arranged on the spot. Raoul dismissed the black boy,
took off his coat and fell to work decanting something, with the
understanding that his salary, a microscopic one, should begin from date
if his cousin should recommend him.

"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he called from under the counter, later in the day,
"you t'ink it would be hanny disgrace to paint de pigshoe of a niggah?"

"Certainly not."

"Ah, my soul! what a pigshoe I could paint of Bras-Coupe!"

We have the afflatus in Louisiana, if nothing else.

CHAPTER XX

A VERY NATURAL MISTAKE

MR. Raoul Innerarity proved a treasure. The fact became patent in a few
hours. To a student of the community he was a key, a lamp, a lexicon, a
microscope, a tabulated statement, a book of heraldry, a city directory,
a glass of wine, a Book of Days, a pair of wings, a comic almanac, a
diving bell, a Creole _veritas_. Before the day had had time to cool,
his continual stream of words had done more to elucidate the mysteries
in which his employer had begun to be befogged than half a year of the
apothecary's slow and scrupulous guessing. It was like showing how to
carve a strange fowl. The way he dovetailed story into story and drew
forward in panoramic procession Lufki-Humma and Epaminondas Fusilier,
Zephyr Grandissime and the lady of the _lettre de cachet_, Demosthenes
De Grapion and the _fille a l'hopital_, Georges De Grapion and the
_fille a la cassette_, Numa Grandissime, father of the two Honores,
young Nancanou and old Agricola,--the way he made them

"Knit hands and beat the ground
In a light, fantastic round,"

would have shamed the skilled volubility of Sheharazade.

"Look!" said the story-teller, summing up; "you take hanny 'istory of
France an' see the hage of my familie. Pipple talk about de Boulignys,
de Sauves, de Grandpres, de Lemoynes, de St. Maxents,--bla-a-a! De
Grandissimes is as hole as de dev'! What? De mose of de Creole families
is not so hold as plenty of my yallah kinfolks!"

The apothecary found very soon that a little salt improved M. Raoul's
statements.

But here he was, a perfect treasure, and Frowenfeld, fleeing before h